Re-emerging from a self-imposed exile after her crushing defeat in the 2016 presidential election, Democrat Hillary Clinton on Tuesday blamed misogyny, FBI Director James Comey, and especially Russia for her loss to Donald Trump.

Clinton made her comments at a Women for Women forum during an on-air interview conducted by CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour. She said Comey halted her momentum on October 28 by informing Congress that he was reopening an investigation into her handling of classified information as secretary of state. She said Russian agents also targeted her by leaking emails pilfered from the gmail account of her campaign chairman, John Podetsa.

“Well, he certainly interfered in our election, and it was clear that he interfered to hurt me and help my opponent.”

“I was on the way to winning when a combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28th and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off,” Clinton said.

The evidence of that, she insisted, was “compelling, persuasive.” She cited Nate Silver, a prominent election forecaster who had predicted she would win. He has written since that she would be president had the election taken place October 27.

Clinton accepted perfunctory responsibility for her loss, noting that she was the candidate. She admitted unspecified mistakes. But she returned again and again to Russia, which U.S. intelligence services have concluded hacked into Podesta’s email and the computer system of the Democratic National Committee.

[lz_jwplayer video=tTFaw7o2]

“There was just a lot of funny business going on around that,” she said. “And ask yourself this: Within an hour or two of the Hollywood Access tape being made public, the theft of John Podesta’s emails hit WikiLeaks. What a coincidence. So, I mean, you just can’t make this stuff up.”

That was a reference to a recording made on the set of “Access Hollywood” 11 years earlier. Trump, who was to be a guest on that episode, made crude comments about grabbing women in a hot microphone incident.

At the time, it looked like it could be the end of Trump’s campaign. But then WikiLeaks turned out a steady stream of embarrassing emails from Clinton campaign insiders.

Clinton refused to utter the name of Russian President Vladimir Putin but clearly blamed him, and suggested that Trump might have been complicit.

Who do you think would win the Presidency?

By completing the poll, you agree to receive emails from LifeZette, occasional offers from our partners and that you've read and agree to our privacy policy and legal statement.

“Well, he certainly interfered in our election, and it was clear that he interfered to hurt me and help my opponent,” she said. “And if you chart my opponent and his campaign’s statements, they quite coordinated with the goal that leader who shall remain nameless had.”

Clinton said Putin hates her because she called him out for rigging parliamentary elections, which she said helped draw protesters into the streets in St. Petersburg.

“We do speak out about rigged elections,” she said. “That kind of goes with the territory — at least it did prior to this administration.”

Clinton also blamed her gender.

“Yes, it was a role in this election, and I will have a lot to say about it,” she said, alluding to a “painful” book that she is writing about the election. “I think that it is something that whatever your political party, whatever your particular ideological bent, you have a stake as a woman and a man … to ensure that our promise of equality that we hold out and the effort that so many women and men have made over the decades to ensure it doesn’t go backwards.”

[lz_related_box id=”789610″]

Searching for still more culprits, Clinton identified the moderators of the presidential debates, who she contended gave Trump a pass by declining to press the Republican candidate for specifics on how he planned to fulfill his promise of creating jobs. Trump, in fact, did face those questions during the debates.

Clinton insisted that she took the high road during the campaign.

“I wasn’t going to appeal to people’s emotions in the same way that my opponent did, which I think is, frankly, what’s getting him into all kinds of difficulties now in trying to fulfill these promises that he made,” he said.

It is a breathtaking assertion for a candidate who famously labeled her opponent’s supporters as a basket full of deplorables.

Clinton said her election would have sent an important message to women and girls across the country and throughout the world. She said for now, though, “I’m now back to being an activist citizen and part of the resistance.”